


Father of One

by VSSAKJ



Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 21:56:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11586975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VSSAKJ/pseuds/VSSAKJ
Summary: You wish you’d never met that brother and sister who smiled like they’d saved the world.





	Father of One

The first time you meet him, you’re certain he’s older than you.

That’s what you tell yourself, as you watch his face light up when his sister clarifies who you are, where you’re from, and what you’re doing with them. You’ll be teaching him to fight, she says, and you suppose that his fire might make him capable, even if his height does not.

Being a half-elf, he must be older than your twenty-some years. Being a half-elf, he struggles initially with the sword, and Martel’s lessons in the realm of magic are where he instead proves successful. You catch yourself smiling at his victories, encouraging him in his failures, and spending more time with them than perhaps a man of your position ought to.

When Queen Soleil dismisses you from your position in her army, your shoulders are square and your head is high. Aware of the risks, you’d made this choice long before she she finished the motion here, and if you were ashamed of it, then it wouldn’t have been worth making in the first place. In the wilderness, your family of three travels furtively from place to place, sometimes chased out with weapons and other times ignored until you choose to go of your own accord.

Mithos never grows any taller, but his fire blazes, and he becomes angrier the more injustices you suffer. Martel is the mediating force; you, a human, feel it’s best to keep your mouth shut during their arguments. When Mithos finally turns to you and demands your opinion, you shake your head sadly and cast your gaze towards the stars. You wonder if you’ll ever have an answer worth giving to him.

War breaks out. Martel is sadder than you’ve ever known her to be, until a half-elf from the country you would have opposed finds his way into your company. You voice your initial misgivings about him, but Martel is fierce that any person, half-elf or otherwise, deserves a chance to join your cause. You haven’t fought with her before before—you cede the issue, thinking about how the lines of your face have changed and Mithos looks the same as he always has. How could you have any idea?

Mithos is changeable, one day accepting Yuan’s presence without complaint and another fuming with jealousy because Yuan makes his sister smile. Mithos binds himself to you ever more tightly, and you cross swords just for the sake of it. Martel insists you’re a pacifist group, trying to bring healing to the world rather than harm.

“One day,” Mithos pants, ducking under your blow and making to elbow you in the middle, “We’ll have a place to live. You, my sister, and me.” He’d stormed into the campsite earlier, after having been asked by Martel to let her and Yuan walk in peace. You’d tossed him his blade without a word, and now here you were, trying not to smile. If Martel wanted Yuan there, Mithos could never bear to kick him out.

“We will.” You agree, letting your mind wander for a moment to wherever Martel and Yuan may be, and wonder what they might be doing. Martel had been an idea you’d entertained before, of course, but you would hardly make decisions for her. Mithos would hate you, and you wouldn’t dare.

Mithos lets his sword fall to the ground, a third of it sinking deeply into the trampled grass beneath your feet. He smiles at you, as brightly as Martel smiles for Yuan. “I’m glad we met you, Kratos. You’re like family to us.”

Your heart thuds, and you almost swallow your tongue when Mithos wraps his arms around you tightly. He isn’t your son, you tell yourself, despite the fact that you’ve always wanted one. You hold him around the shoulders and pat the back of his head, which hasn’t changed its distance from the ground in all the years you’ve known him.

He isn’t your son, you lie to yourself, and say nothing.

 

You study your reflection in the mirror and remember the days when you couldn’t understand how half-elves lived. You stare at your own stranger’s eyes and remember wondering how half-eves understood themselves, when their appearances refused to change, and remember wondering how they accounted for their own existence in a sea of timeless days and nights.

You understand now, and you wish you didn’t.

“Kratos.”

His voice always finds you, no matter how far away he is. You leave behind the man in the mirror, adjust your sword belt, and proceed to his self-styled throne, in a room where he can keep track of all his goings-on. He’s long-legged and lean, leaning heavily on one hand and studying the moving particles in a tall cylinder. You’ll never get used this: the lengthy hair, the sharp eyes, the difference in height. He still smirks like a child.

“The Chosen of Tethe’alla’s heir is going to be born this year. Aren’t you excited?” You wonder what that word means anymore—you’re certain neither of you have felt it in a thousand years. Regardless, he doesn’t seem interested in an answer, and drawls on without looking at you, “You’ll be responsible this time. You won’t let me down.”

His tone evokes an ‘again’ that he doesn’t bother saying, because you both know what he’s referring to. You bow deeply and leave his room before you can count how many times this has happened. Over and over, the sun keeps rising and setting, and you keep watching Chosens die and live, and you wish you’d never met that brother and sister who smiled like they’d saved the world.

You travel to Meltokio and imagine sleeping without waking up.

The Chosen’s wife is a hard woman, a knot wrought of mythril and clothed in a gown soaked with arsenic: an unsuccessful attempt to try and make her into something that might appeal to the wealthy folk of the city. You know the feeling in your breast, deep beneath the ache of exhaustion and guilt: the feeling is sympathy, for she looks nearly as tired as you feel. You wonder how that’s even possible.

She wants nothing to do with you and you can hardly blame her, but the baby is the property of Cruxis and so are you. You do as you’ve been bidden and press the Cruxis Crystal into his chest, marking him as Chosen. He sets off screaming and she screams at you to get away; the cries he makes pierce deep into your soul, and you wish you hadn’t heard them. You wish you hadn’t caused them. You wish you could rest.

He isn’t your son, either.

 

Somehow, the last sixteen years have been harder than the three thousand that came before them. You’ve lived an unnaturally long life, you try to reason, and it’s finally catching up with you. You were only ever supposed to be a soldier: you were never meant to be an angel, living as long as elves and learning the lifespans of everything around you.

You’re a plain person, you decided a long time ago: there is nothing remarkable about you other than the circumstances which have brought you to this time and place. It could have been anyone—it should have been someone else.

You stare in the direction of the sun, trying to ignore the Tower that’s appeared in the sky and what that means for the cheerful blonde girl standing next to you. She trusts you already—her face reminds you of Martel. That’s somehow worse than if she looked like any other failed Chosen.

“How can I ever thank you for saving the Chosen?” Her grandmother, the one who’s passed the cursed title on to her, asks, and you wish you could shake your head. You wish you could explain that sometimes, it would be better to die than to live. You imagine that if the girl knew what was to come, she would agree with you.

They’ve been conversing, and you haven’t been listening, but a name spoken seizes your attention. You stare at the young man who’d been wielding two swords during the battle, your heart filled with lead. “Your name is Lloyd?”

“Yeah, but who are you to ask for me name?”

 _‘No one,’_ you wish to tell him, _’I am no one.’_

He keeps staring at you, so you force your mouth to work, telling the first half-truth of many you know you’ll be forced to endure on this particular journey. Lying shouldn’t come so easily, but you have plenty of experience by now. “I am Kratos, a mercenary.”

He isn’t your son, you tell yourself. He reminds you of you, and he reminds you of Mithos, and he isn’t yours. He’s just a boy named Lloyd.

You walk into the Martel Temple accompanied by three children you’re sure to doom, and have never hated yourself more.


End file.
